Category Archives: _FALL 2015

Thanks to all our fall 2015 Texas A&M, Clemson and Roger Williams University students for the hard work and good energy. this semester.
Good luck all with your next future goals and stay in touch.

Thanks to all our professors, visiting lecturers, all architects that have guided us during our field studies visits and travels and all our jury for coming to close another wonderful semester at the BAC.

Practice Research Symposium EuropeLocation: Fundación Palo Alto and BAU Design College of Barcelona
Dates: 27/11 – 29/11
Hours: Fri: 9:30 – 20:30. Sat 9:30 – 20:00. Sun: 9:30 – 16:00.
Admission: Free but registration required before 22/11
The Practice Research Symposia (PRT) is a panel of masters in a specific field of architecture/design/arts held by RMIT University. Discussion panels, lectures, and social events are held throughout the day to examine the research done by these masters.Web Address: Practice Research Symposium EuropeReporting: Raul Ramirez Jr., Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Barcelona Jazz Festival
Location: Various venues
Dates: 26/9 – 11/12
Hours: Varied between days.
Admission: 12€ – 65€ (Varied between venues)
The Barcelona Jazz Festival is a large event where top jazz performers show their talents to the public. There are over fifty concerts and twenty venues that take place all over Barcelona throughout the dates of the event.
Web Address: Barcelona Jazz Festival
Reporting: Raul Ramirez Jr., Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

100 ideas to solve the London housing crisis
Location: The Building Centre, London
Dates: 15/10 – 17/12
Hours: Mon – Fri : 9:00 – 19:00. Sat : 10 – 17:00.
Admission: Free
New London Architecture is showcasing 100 of the over 200 projects submitted in a competition to help alleviate the London housing crisis. The top ten projects will worth with the Greater London Authority, London’s City Hall, and explain how their projects would be implemented in the future.
Web Address: The Building CentreReporting: Raul Ramirez Jr., Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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BAC SEMINAR and STUDIO NEWS:

Visit from BIM specialist Ignasi Perez
Location: Barcelona Architecture Center (BAC)
Dates: 23/11 and 26/11
Hours: 16:00 – 20:00 and 9:30 – 13:30
Ignasi Perez, an architect involved deeply into the construction field, visited the BAC studio to provide input in student projects. His main objective was to help students find the best material option that works with their design.Reporting: Raul Ramirez Jr., Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Thanksgiving at the BAC
Location: Barcelona Architecture Center (BAC)
Dates: 26/11
Hours: 19:30 – 22:30
The awesome professors of BAC held the popular North American tradition of the thanksgiving dinner for all the students. Each person helped out with their contribution of food or dessert. A vast amount of food was consumed that day.Reporting: Raul Ramirez Jr., Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

Sara Udina’s professional experience and her position inside the City´s Urban Planning Department provides her with an accurate insight of the current and future planning of Barcelona. The city is a complex mechanism that has to be analyzed at different scales, especially when planning its evolution and growth. The urban decisions for the city aim for it to be a system with high connectivity and public spaces, tied with a vast network of green spaces. Through the lecture, key projects in the city where mentioned such as les Glories, 22@, the Sagrera Railway Station, and the future connection of the Collserola Mountains back to the city. Of special interest for our students are the Industrial heritage plans of the city, directly tied to our student’s project in la Escocesa; but most importantly, the understanding that specific projects in the city are always tied directly to the wide panorama of the city as a whole.

The Second Phase Review of the Design Studio took place this past November 19th. Students are preparing for their studio final presentations to take place in a couple of weeks from now. In in this review they aimed to present a draft of what will be explained in the course closure days to a critic jury panel. Students are working in the post-production phase of their studio projects for this Fall 2015 course. Just a couple of weeks to go!

World Press Photo 2015 Exhibition
Location: Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona
Dates: 12 November to 13 December
Hours: Tuesday ‐ Sunday 11.00‐20.00 (No tickets sold within 30 minutes of closing time)
The CCCB hosts 134 photos worthy of an ultimate prize in the 2015 edition of the World Press Photo Exhibition. Each of them is supposedly alive, shocking, and real.Reporting: Julian Owens, Clemson University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Film & Cook Festival de Cine y Gastronomia
Dates: 6 November ‐ Unknown
Film and Cook is a new concept of festival where it joins the passion for cinema and gastronomy. A showcase for cinematographic productions based on gastronomy that brings the high gastronomy over to general public and announces their protagonists. It offers gastronomic shows with innovation as its protagonist.

Pop and Music
Location: Fondation Louis Vuitton
Dates: Jun 3, 2015 to Jan 4, 2016
Hours: Mon to Thurs: 12pm – 7 pm, Fri: 12pm – 11pm, Sat to Sun: 11am – 8pm, Close Tuesdays
Admission: €14
An exhibition of work from artists interested in objects and images vehicled by advertising, television, cinema, and the internet. As well the building by Frank Gehry provides a different thought process of creating a second skin and forms.
Web Address: Pop and Music Reporting: Jose De Leon, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Painter Nell Hill Birthday
Date: 19 November 2015
Possibly Europe’s oldest living artist has celebrated her 105th birthday. Acclaimed painter Nell Hill marked the occasion with a celebration at Walton Heath Manor residential home in Walton on the Hill. With work spanning 90 years, Nell has sold her botanical‐themed watercolours and
Peter Rabbit prints all over the world.Reporting: Jose De Leon, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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BAC SEMINARS NEWS:

Barcelona Towards The Future, Lecture by Sara Udina
Location: City Council
The lecture focused on the future of the city of Barcelona in terms of construction, infrastructure, and main goals to achieve. Architect Sara Udina explained the ongoing projects of the city such as 22@, the Sagrera Railway Station, and the future connection of the Collserola Mountains back to the city.Reporting: Jose De Leon, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Seminar Visits Test
The past Tuesday Texas A&M, Clemson, Roger Williams took the final exam covering all our seminar visits that were instructed by Merce Berengue bringing a closer conclusion to the class.Reporting: Jose De Leon, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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BAC STUDIO NEWS:

BAC Studio
The week started with students constructing small models to start giving perspective of the overall aspect of their building individually as well with the context of La Escosesa. The task is to emphasize a main component of the project and visualize the scale of the building with the interior and exterior spaces.Reporting: Jose De Leon, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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BAC Studio 2nd Phase Review
On Thursday all students presented their draft presentation posters to their professors in our first series of refinement towards the final presentations. The presentations consisted of boards explaining the concept of the project, the context of the site and city, relationships between buildings, technical drawings, and compilations of renders and elevations.Reporting: Jose De Leon, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

MACBA SymposiumLocation: MACBA_Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
Dates: 2‐3 November 2015
Hours: 9‐20:30
Talking Galleries instigates the debate and exchange of new trends and issues specific to the art gallery sector. Open to gallerists and art professionals, the 4th Symposium will be celebrated in Barcelona (MACBA ‐ Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) on 2–3 November. Two days in which to create a space to reflect and question how galleries should transform and adapt to a new environment, and how to respond to new challenges.

Film Symphony Orchestra
Location: L’Auditori Lepant 150, 08013 Barcelona
Hours: From Monday to Saturdays 3pm‐9pm
Dates: Sunday November 15
Admission Cost: 22‐49 euros
This Sunday, the Film Symphony Orchestra brings cinematography to the home of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, L’Auditori. Expect to hear performances of classics such as Star Trek, The Matrix, Missions Impossible and E.T. and more recent films like The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything by this renowned orchestra comprised of over 70 musicians.
Web Address: https://www.auditori.cat/en/20256Reporting: Joshua Berry, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

This architecture event will take place in the Edward Building, which can be accessed from the front entrance of the architecture building at UCLAN opposite Granthams printers on Corporation street. The abhorrence of the modern world, expressed most explicitly in a comprehensive popular rejection of the Modernist city, stands testament to the object failure of the Modernist project to deliver its promised utopia.
Mounting a Post-­‐Modern critique of this failure, as irony and as dejection, was itself equally fruitless and ultimately facile, offering far less, in terms of substance, than the Modernist project itself.

Boeri Studio’s Bosco Verticale preserves the longtime architectural fantasy of building tall forest towers. Since the residential building was completed late last year, it continues to garner plenty of attention and awards. Most recently, the project won the 2015 Best Tall Building Worldwide from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The announcement concludes a nearly yearlong juried selection process that began with 123 entries representing 33 countries.

Vital Art Nouveau 1900 – Exhibition – Prague, Czech Republic
Location: Prague Municipal House
Date: 1 October 2015 – 31 December 2015
Hours: 10:00 – 19:00
Admissions cost: 150 czk
The exhibition in the Prague Municipal House is presenting a selection of the most outstanding works of Czech and European Art Nouveau art from the holdings of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. The exhibition is intended to show the Art Nouveau arts and crafts as part of the ground-breaking, forward-looking trends and emancipation efforts that evolved in the late 19th century, as a reformist art movement that strove for “the multiplication and intensification of life”. The display will therefore explore the Art Nouveau aesthetic both in terms of modern artist designers’ creative ambitions and the new zest for life that swept society as a whole. Masterpieces of decorative art exhibited at the famous Paris World’s Fair of 1900 will be on display, alongside works influenced by the various currents of thought popular at the time (such as the theories of Vitalism and Spiritism), as well as the formal and stylistic innovations in glassware, ceramics and furniture.
Other areas will cover the radical changes in life style as reflected in interior design, the visual style of poster art and fashion.
Web Address: http://www.obecnidum.cz/en/vital‐art‐noveau‐1900‐1404044031.htmlReporting: Joshua Berry, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Short Film Festival Berlin
Location: Linienstrabe 227 10178 Berlin zum Stadtplan
Date: 10 – 15th of November 2015
Hours: Evenings
Admissions Cost: unknown
The Short Film Festival Berlin is the second most significant international film festival in Berlin after the Berlinale and also the second oldest short film festival in Germany. For six days inNovember each year, it presents short and medium length films from all over the world in selected cinemas in Berlin.
Web Address: http://www.interfilm.de/en/festival2015/home.htmlReporting: Joshua Berry, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Rome, Jazz Festival
Location: Auditorium Parco Della Musica
Date: Saturday 14th November
Hours: 9:00 p.m.
Admission Cost: free
New York‐based Gregory Porter, the new international star of jazz singing, will open the 2015 edition of Roma Jazz Festival. Acclaimed over the last years by critics and audience for his baritone voice – an amazing blend of soul, gospel, blues and jazz, his performances evoke the charming atmosphere of music clubs in the Fifties.
Web Address: http://www.romajazzfestival.it/?lang=en Reporting: Joshua Berry, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

The Lion King – London
Location: Lyceum Theater
Date: 14‐11‐2015
Hours: 7:30 p.m.
Admission Cost: 65 pounds
Brilliantly reimagined by acclaimed director Julie Taymore, Disney’s beloved film has been transformed into a spectacular stage production that explodes with glorious colours, stunning effects and enchanting music. At its heart is the powerful and moving story of Simba ‐‐ the epic adventure of his journey from wide‐eyed cub to his destined role as King of the Pridelands.
Web Address: http://www.thelionking.co.uk/Reporting: Joshua Berry, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Winter Fine Arts and Antiques Fair
Location: Olympia London, Hammersmith Road,
Kensington, London
Date: 2nd November until 8th November 2015
Hours: 11am – 8 pm (roughly)
Admission Cost: from 13 pounds
The Winter Fine Arts and Antiques Fair is becoming somewhat of an antique itself, as it celebrates a quarter of a century this year. Taking place at London’s Olympia, the annual fair is a permanent fixture on the calendars of all art and antique aficionados. It has also become a popular
social event with high profile visitors such as Bono, Claudia Schiffer and Jools Holland helping to boost its reputation. But don’t worry if you don’t know your Art Deco from your Art Nouveau, the Fair is equally popular with new buyers looking to decorate their homes. Each year, over 20,000 visitors swarm to the fair with around 125 exhibitors offering everything from silver teapots and Lalique vases to Cartier earrings and from rubies to Regency furniture.
Web Address: http://www.olympia‐antiques.comReporting: Joshua Berry, Texas A&M University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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INDEPENDENT TRAVEL:

Independent Travel – Prague, Petřín Lookout Tower

When in Prague it was suggested to our group that we visit the “effiel tower of Prague.” Its official name is the Petřínská Rozhledna and it was built in 1891 and was used as an observation tower as well as a transmission tower. In 1889, members of the Club of Czech Tourists visited the world exposition in Paris and were inspired by the Eiffel Tower, which is w hy it was referred to us in that way. While visiting the tower people there to ld us, in 1953, a television broadcasting antenna was installed, and the prog ram feed performed by a directional radio antenna. This served as Prague’s main television signal provider until the opening of the Žižkov Television Tower in late 1992.

Since I am studying architecture here it only made sense to go and see the Dancing House by Frank Ghery. While there, I found out that the very nontraditional design was very controversial at the time of it being built because the house stands out among the Baroque, Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings for which Prague is known for, and some thought that it contrasts too much with the normal architectural style.

The Parliament Building was the building I enjoyed seeing the most in Budapest. It’s Gothic Revival style, was beautiful, especially when lit up at night and seeing the reflection on the river. It has a symmetrical façade and a central dome. The dome is Renaissance Revival architecture. Also inside the parliament building is symmetrical and has two absolutely identical parliament halls out of which one is used for the politics, the other one is used for guided tours.

The inside of St. Stephen’s Basilica was breath taking. The church is named after Saint Stephen I of Hungary, the first King of Hungary. It is the third highest church in Hungary. The architectural style is Neo-­‐Classical, a Greek cross ground plan and the façade is anchored by two large bell towers. We got to go inside the dome by elevator or climbing 364 stairs and at the top you could see all of Budapest.

Independent Travel – Rome, Pope Sighting at the Vatican
Date: 8 November
Location: Rome, Italy
During independent travel, I was priveleged to see the Pope on multiple occasions. However, seeing Pope Francis in the Vatican was one of the most surreal moments of my life. I have never seen one man’s presence demand such positive attention. It was incredible.Reporting: Julian Owens, Clemson University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Independent Travel – Rome, The MAXXI (Zaha Hadid)
Date: 8 November
Location: Rome, Italy
Zaha demonstrated pure brilliance through the design of this museum. It’s fluid movement and rigid form contribute to a modern artistic environment. While, it is a beautiful work of architecture, it seriously lacks art within its exhibits, in my opinion. However, the building is such a joy to walk around.Reporting: Julian Owens, Clemson University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Independent Travel – Rome, The Pantheon
Date: 9 November
Location: Rome, Italy
I now understand why no one is 100% sure how the Pantheon was built. It’s one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. It’s not that large of a building compared to other monumental buildings in Rome; however, it is so mesmerizing that I spent almost 3 hours in there. I completely lost track of time, getting lost in sketching and admiring the optical illusion that is the Pantheon’s dome.Reporting: Julian Owens, Clemson University Undergraduate Arch. Student

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Independent Travel – Milan, Duomo di Milano
Date: 12 November
Location: Milan Italy
The Milan Cathedral was my final stop in my tour through Italy. This is easily the most beautiful cathedral I have seen. I had the priveledge of enjoying sunset on the upper terrace of the cathedral. I swear that terrace has the most beautiful views in all of Italy. After enjoying the beautiful views, I helped myself to some pizza and a little bit of gellato and called it a trip.Reporting: Julian Owens, Clemson University Undergraduate Arch. Student

Fall 2015 students from Texas A&M, Clemson and Roger Williams University attended their second field studies trip to the Netherlands this past October. The visits where guided by Ivan Blasi and Anna Sala, both part of our BAC faculty team. The intense trip went through Rotterdam, The Hague, Hilversum, Delft, Zaandam, Utrecht and Amsterdam in a short 8 days. Students came back both impressed and energetic to continue the rest of this course!
Thanks again to everyone who made part of this trip.